Board 8 > What would you say is the 'definitive' game of each genre?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like, I think we can all agree that when the average person thinks of platformers, their minds go to Mario, stealth games, Metal Gear Solid, and FPSes, it's probably Call of Duty. I was thinking about this in terms of JRPGs, whether it's still Final Fantasy or if Persona took over.

Anagram posted...

I was thinking about this in terms of JRPGs, whether it's still Final Fantasy or if Persona took over.

Probably still Final Fantasy if FF7R proves anything.

Pokemon is a JRPG right

LeonhartFour posted...

Pokemon is a JRPG right

Yeah, even though seemingly everyone just thinks of it as a unique entity instead.

It depends on your definitive definition.

Like I think FPS could also easily be Doom.

For JRPGs I think most would still jump to Final Fantasy VII

Fighting: Street Fighter II
Rhythm: Guitar Hero
Survival Horror: Resident Evil
Adventure: Telltale's The Walking Dead (at this point?)
Action RPG: Dark Souls
Racing: Toss-up between Forza & Gran Turismo. I would lean the former since releases are more consistent.
Strategy: Civilization

Can we stop calling a RPG a genre
"You can level up in this game" is not a genre

Nanis23 posted...

Can we stop calling a RPG a genre
"You can level up in this game" is not a genre

*blinks*

Snake5555555555 posted...

Adventure: Telltale's The Walking Dead (at this point?)

Uncharted

Can we stop calling a FPS a genre
"You can shoot motherfuckers in this game" is not a genre

Nanis23 posted...

Can we stop calling a RPG a genre
"You can level up in this game" is not a genre

What would you call the genre of game that rpg refers to then?

Underleveled posted...

Can we stop calling a FPS a genre
"You can shoot motherfuckers in this game" is not a genre

Can't just call it a "shooter" -- that name was in use for a very different style of game long before The Catacomb Abyss and Wolf 3-D.

Underleveled posted...

Uncharted

I was actually thinking "adventure" as the type of game where there is little action and has more a focus on dialogue and puzzle solving, such as Life is Strange, Monkey Island, Kentucky Route Zero, Grim Fandango, etc.

To me it's pretty easily Chrono Trigger but I also am probably using a different definition of definitive. The way I'm thinking of it is more like "this is the game people would point at to illustrate what a JRPG is", and not necessarily just the game the most people would recognize.

Of course there's also different stylistic trends between modern JRPG's and JRPG's from ~1990-2005, so maybe you'd use like Persona 5 or something for the former category. IDK.

Can we stop calling a platformer a genre
"You can jump places" is not a genre

Sandbox - Minecraft
Battle Royale - PUBG
MOBA - League of Legends
Text adventure - Zork
P&C adventure - Maniac Mansion
MMORPG - WoW...though maybe not for long
Roguelike - Spelunky
Tactical RPG - FFT
Simulation - SimCity or The Sims, depending on interpretation
Auto battle - TFT
RTS - Starcraft

Puzzle: Tetris
That might be the most confident I am in any of them.

Also a traditional-enough RPG where it's turn-based with character-building and strategic concepts straight from tabletop RPGs is very straightforward. It's action-RPGs that start to blur the line as even action games of other genres have absorbed concepts from RPGs to varying extents to add depth and customization. But I don't think I play many ARPGs where I'm like "I'm not sure this even qualifies as an RPG."

paperwarior posted...

Puzzle: Tetris
That might be the most confident I am in any of them.

Is Tetris a puzzle game? I didn't mention it because I'm not sure what it is...unless you let it define its own genre.

"Puzzle" is kind of a weird genre because it refers to totally different types of games (your Tetris, Puyo Puyo and Lumines type games or your Professor Layton or Picross type games) but yeah that's definitely where you'd put Tetris broadly speaking.

pyresword posted...

To me it's pretty easily Chrono Trigger but I also am probably using a different definition of definitive. The way I'm thinking of it is more like "this is the game people would point at to illustrate what a JRPG is", and not necessarily just the game the most people would recognize.

Of course there's also different stylistic trends between modern JRPG's and JRPG's from ~1990-2005, so maybe you'd use like Persona 5 or something for the former category. IDK.

In that case I'd probably go with Dragon Quest.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

What would you call the genre of game that rpg refers to then?

Zelda

Fighting: Super Smash Bros

Tactical Espionage Acton: Resident Evil 4

I associate splinter cell with stealth more than mgs actually, mgs is... too mgs

seconding zork for text adventure

leaning love plus for dating sims as it feels like the key inspiration for most since then
... clannad for visual novels in general? anything ryukishi's in an odd place, zero escape and danganronpa and ace attorney are pretty much their own entities and... well, when i think of fate now i think gacha

speaking of probably fgo for gacha? possibly granblue. some probably think of genshin too though i definitely don't associate its core gameplay enough to associate it.

actually puyo puyo (or maybe columns) for the puzzle subgenre it's in along with tetris. i feel like i've seen a lot more games take inspiration from it than any other game like it
puzzle bobble also comes to mind and arguably warrants its own classification as a title to associate with its own genre
and arkanoid for breakout clones (unsafe as it is to say that and not breakout it's definitely also the most representative of its archetype. i guess peggle fits in here too)

fighting is pretty hard given the spread of different series these days. guilty gear feels like it's more or less in the middle of all of them now, between all the anime and non-anime fighters, so i guess guilty gear strive's the current answer? sf2 for more retro fighters but it's not what comes to mind to me when i think of fighting games nowadays and i don't think the answer is necessarily any newer sf either

simulation... i don't know. sims 2 for... well, sims-esque simulation games is probably still safe
for city builders, cities skylines is probably the easiest to picture these days compared to any individual simcity game though this may just be me.
this is definitely a controversial take but i'm leaning rollercoaster tycoon 3 for non-city builder tycoon games, since the more recent ports have probably placed it in a more relevant position than its predecessors or contemporary, planet coaster. plus planet coaster definitely has more of its dna than prior ones.
there probably should be one for shop-management sims too given how many of them are but no titles come to mind besides recettear (and it's not recettear lol)
i can't not associate vehicle simulation games with gran turismo (specifically 4 for me since it's the one i played the most). yes forza exists now but still. alternate mentions to assetto corsa and on a different note, flight simulator x.
ace combat 7 or maybe still one of the ps2 ones for arcadey planes
still burnout 3 for arcadey cars
mario kart wii for kart racers even if my favourite is still bomberman kart (8 may be way more successful than it now but the gravity gimmicks separate it too much from any other ones imo, answer could've maybe been sonic transformed but that game kind of fell too far out of relevance)

wrpgs goes to witcher 3 these days and jrpgs... hm.
i feel like the "image" of jrpgs to me is snes-era games with dragon quest-type first-person battle systems and usually fantasy themes, as has been reinforced even in popular indie offerings like undertale (sure deltarune generally contradicts this but still), and partially with others like omori, lisa, jimmy etc., but i don't think it'd necessarily be a dragon quest game (as it generally didn't stick out with its visual style compared to dedicated first-person dungeon crawlers up until they were pretty much at the point of going 3d and its particular battle windows until then were kind of too much a dq-only thing) or non-persona smt (likewise, and more recent examples often feel too close to dungeon crawlers). also it may have been the cause of most of the indie titles further up but the mother series is kind of just too thematically offbeat to fit (and its angled overworld perspective is still a little too out there imo). there are of course plenty of others, like the far east of eden, tenshi no uta, early saga games/final fantasy legend or even the numbered phantasy star titles but there's no way the answer is any of them... so. clearly the answer can only be one thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iPgH_rgVjY
just kidding i'm conceding it's probably something else and more popular like ff7/ffx or dq8/11 or persona 5 or smtv. or a pokemon generation. arguably even stuff like atelier's valid these days given the state of the jrpg scene >_>

When I think FPS I think of Doom, but I guess that just means I'm old.

UF8 posted...

fighting is pretty hard given the spread of different series these days. guilty gear feels like it's more or less in the middle of all of them now, between all the anime and non-anime fighters, so i guess guilty gear strive's the current answer? sf2 for more retro fighters but it's not what comes to mind to me when i think of fighting games nowadays and i don't think the answer is necessarily any newer sf either

I feel like for something to be definitive, it has to be pretty widely played in relation to the genre, and Guilty Gear certainly (and sadly) is not that.

Nowadays, fighting games mostly come down to 2D vs. 3D. 3D is pretty easily Tekken, 2D is a bit trickier, now. It was Street Fighter for sure, but lately a very good argument could be made for Mortal Kombat.

Edit: Based on the wording of the topic post, when people just hear fighting games, the average person is probably saying Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat far before anything else. The reason I wouldnt say Smash Bros is because I dont think the average person instantly considers Smash specifically as a fighting game. When asked what genre it is, sure, more people probably say fighting than not, but I dont think the reverse is quite as strong. People just kinda think of Smash as its own thing.

Tactical FPS - CS:GO (though I assume more people would say Valorant now)
Dungeon Crawler - Diablo 2
Beat 'Em Up - Streets of Rage 2?
CCG - Hearthstone or Magic
Idle/Clicker - Cookie Clicker
Party Game - Mario Party
Sports is likely too broad, but if it isn't it's probably FIFA?

Bullet hell shmup - Touhou
Sidescrolling shmup - Metal Slug? Or Cuphead
Party platformer fighter - Super Smash Bros. series

ESY16 posted...

Sports is likely too broad, but if it isn't it's probably FIFA?

Madden EASILY

Snake5555555555 posted...

I was actually thinking "adventure" as the type of game where there is little action and has more a focus on dialogue and puzzle solving, such as Life is Strange, Monkey Island, Kentucky Route Zero, Grim Fandango, etc.

I think your definition is too narrow BUT theres no way Uncharted fits in any definition of adventure game. Its some subgenre of an action game.

as for adventure, it is very broad in my mind that it stretches from GTA to Zork. Plenty of subgenres there too.

Action Adventure is a sub genre I'd ascribe to Uncharted for sure. (I'd call it a third person shooter first and foremost, though)

Pretty much every Action RPG thats remotely hard is compared to Dark Souls

Slay the Spire for Deckbuilders

Underleveled posted...

Madden EASILY

I wouldn't be too sure. FIFA seems more plausible, TBH. When I was teaching, the only two games my students were playing were CoD and FIFA, and nobody outside the US is going to care about Madden.

azuarc posted...

I wouldn't be too sure. FIFA seems more plausible, TBH. When I was teaching, the only two games my students were playing were CoD and FIFA, and nobody outside the US is going to care about Madden.

A portion of Canadians do.

https://www.888sport.com/blog/all-sports/top-10-best-selling-sports-video-games-of-all-time

it's FIFA and it's not even remotely close